BOOK REVIEWS FROM A CURIOUS MIND: I read a lot. Books and the data/stories contained within them are my oldest friends. Working at the University of Houston allows me to use the M.D. Anderson Library. Awesome! My wife mentioned that I should write up short summaries/observations on the books I've been reading, since people might be interested in reading them, so I did. Comments are welcome.

RXTT's Top 10's

Friday, September 19, 2014

I wish I was better at Math!

The
Lifebox, The Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About
Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How To Be Happy: Rudy Rucker (2006)

Rudy Rucker is one of my favorite
“cyberpunk” science fiction writers.His
novels Software, Wetware, Freeware, and Realware really blew my mind when I
discovered them in the late 90’s.Awesome stuff indeed.Rudy Rucker
is also a mathematician and a Professor of Computer Science in California.

With this book Mr. Rucker explores
what he has learned from the “gnarly computation” he studies and writes
about.He describes us as being in the
middle of a third great revolution.

“The first came with Newton: the
planets obey physical laws.The second
came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws.In today’s third revolution, we’re coming to realize that even minds and
societies emerge from interacting laws that can be regarded as
computations.Everything is a computation.”

This is the fractal nature of my head.

This
book explains the physical and philosophical implications of this idea.As the exploration of chaos theory and the
fractal nature of the Universe show us, the idea that everything just “is” is
no longer tenable.Our DNA is a
computation.The laws of quantum
mechanics work as computations of probability.Nothing anymore just “is” or “is not.”Things are always variable on many scales, and only because we humans
have a limited view of the Universe do we assume that reality is one
unchanging, explicit existence.

The “gnarly” complexity of life
arose from the “gnarly” properties of elemental matter.We are all a part of it.We all exist in a cloud of probability and
fractal nature.Mr. Rucker shows how
these things are not dehumanizing.They
are life affirming!They are beautiful
and glorious and through understanding these concepts, we can all enjoy our
daily lives to the fullest.Real cool
stuff!The math in this is insane.The deep exploration into mathematics is
beyond my level of understanding, but Mr. Rucker helps to explain it as best he
can to a layperson.

Feedback from the Intellectual Journey

"I love the bluntness of those opinions man!" - !@#$%!

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"(One) of the relatively few reviews of [Jerusalem] to focus seriously and appreciatively on the subject that it was most concerned with, this being the eternity of the poor, and of the neighbourhoods that house them." - Alan Moore (Author - Jerusalem, Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta)